-The Hindu The question of whether or not the Aadhaar bill is a money bill continues to vex Parliament, with the Rajya Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting ending inconclusively after the Opposition demanded specific clauses of Article 110(1) of the Constitution that defines a Money Bill to be part of Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s certification of it as such. Government sources, however, said they were determined to place the Bill as...

-Business Standard Move comes despite RSS affiliated organisation opposing such regulations Maharashtra government has finalised regulations that will allow it to wrest back control from tribals over the lucrative forest trade in goods such as bamboo and tendu leaves worth thousands of crores annually. This also involves management of potentially 80% of community forestlands in the state after the Union Tribal Affairs ministry’s volte-face on interpreting the Forest Rights Act. The Forest Rights Act...

-The Hindu THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health’s intervention has finally brought to close an eight-year-long campaign waged by K.V. Babu, a physician from Kannur, whose relentless fight against the Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) product endorsements and the legal hassles that followed had eventually LED him on a collision course with the Medical Council of India (MCI). In 2008, Dr. Babu had complained to the MCI against IMA, which had signed...

-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...

-Livemint.com These farmers belong to Wardha district, which is among the worst-hit by drought for two years in a row New Delhi: More than 100 farmers from a drought-hit district of Maharashtra asked the state government for permission to commit suicide, but decided not to take the extreme step after officials counselLED them against it, the government has told Parliament. One hundred and nine farmers from Wardha district of Maharashtra—among of the...